


I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Girlfriend How to Dance With You

by Volrosso



Category: Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, The Academy Is...
Genre: Ballroom Dancing, Ey, F/F, F/M, Genderbending, M/M, What a combination
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-13 04:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1211959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Volrosso/pseuds/Volrosso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victor Asher is working around the clock to prove that Alex Suarez is, in fact, a flaming homosexual- something he has dubbed the Suarez Theory.  </p><p>Gabrielle Saporta is working around the clock to get her stupid Ivy-League dream girl to stop being presumably straight. </p><p>Spencer needs everyone to know that they're not a harem and even if they were, Brenda would not be the one in charge of it. </p><p>Alex Suarez is making damn sure everyone knows he's not going to teach Nate Novarro's new girlfriend how to dance with him- without actually giving away the fact that he's been in love with the stupid boy for at least a couple of years now, or maybe since high school.</p><p>Nate needs to make sure the people around him continue to like him and think he's cool- a girlfriend will do just that right?</p><p>Being young is hard work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Girlfriend How to Dance With You

_**The Suarez Theory** _

_Alex Suarez_ could be _a flaming homosexual We could draw on this conclusion using a few different sources as evidence, a few facts that are undeniably true and others are certain observations conducted by highly trusted and informed individuals. Some of it will be blatant stereotyping- if that is unsatisfactory to you I must suggest that you look elsewhere for your truths. But if you are willing to bear with me, stereotypes always come from somewhere, and usually hold a hint of truth._

  1. _Alex Suarez is one of the most well-known individuals in this general vicinity. Everyone loves him. Literally, everyone who has ever lived here for a year or more **has been** or **currently is** in love with him. Even **I've** loved him at one point, even in fleeting thought, and we know I am the very pinnacle of heterosexuality myself. And yet, Alex remains alone. He declines each offer he's been given, even after assuring us that the notion of him being aromantic and/or asexual is preposterous and very much untrue. His last girlfriend Michelle moved away and nobody could ask her why they broke up in the first place. We have no records of Alex's sexuality at all. The topic itself is an enigma wrapped in a mystery trimmed with doubt and tied with a ribbon of questions shrouded in shadow. There is a possibility that he could very well be gay._
  2. _Alex was not choked up about Michelle, at all. They’d been dating for about six months when she packed herself up, and appeared to be quite close in public, even if Alex never really spoke of his relationship. Michelle was in tears when she told me that she loved him. And Alex got over it over a smoothie and a three second heart-to-heart with Brenda that consisted of the phrase "Oh well, she was nice."_
  3. _All of Alex's friends are females, with the exception of Nate Novarro, Dallon Weekes and myself. And this collection of females is not even a collection in the sort of harem way some heterosexual men might think they have. Most of the females in question are not heterosexuals themselves or are taken, and would have no interest in him. Alex shops with them. He gives opinions on their clothes and they all make fun of people together. They are what some would call 'catty' and ultimately destructive to one's self-esteem. _
  4. _The clothes he wears. I will go into full detail in another paper on a later date, and this may not be professional but you must take my word on it for now._
  5. _Alex Suarez is a ballroom dancing instructor, which is something most men do look down upon as a negative thing, but he does get to spend most of the day dancing with beautiful women that want him. As I said, everyone loves him in some way or another. On that note, there is a constant stream of women trying to get his attention, and none have actually managed quite yet._
  6. _Gabrielle Saporta says with all certainty that he is, and her gaydar is the best any of us have ever seen. She has proven that she can pick out a closet case at a Catholic school. This is how we became friends with Brenda._



 

“Interesting theory,” Spencer mumbled, setting the paper down on the sticky counter and going to tend to the blender before it exploded with pineapple- because she _valued_ her job enough to take it seriously. Brenda- who did _not_ value her job, nor did she take it seriously- snatched it up almost instantly to take a look.

She made sure to hold it over her face, in the hand that wasn't holding a latte she may or may not have bought just to go and see the guy at Starbucks that Ryan Ross had been all over lately on the break she didn’t even have. All that work to get over there and the boy was not even that attractive. Okay, well. Just a little bit, Brenda would give him that.

He had nice eyes and he was very nice as a person, probably the kind of person who played guitar to impress girls. He was too scruffy though, Brenda didn’t like scruffy boys.

Not that she was all that fond of boys in general with the exception of like, one or two. Who were, incidentally, her boyfriend and her almost-best-friend’s roommate.

Brenda set down the research paper and squinted at it through those thick red-framed glasses Spencer hated so much, frowning when she got to the last part. “I wasn’t that obvious was I?”

“Tell yourself that, sweetie.” Spencer patted her girlfriend’s head reassuringly and handed Victor his smoothie. Just strawberries. Strawberries and a metric fuck-ton of sugar. Nothing fancy, just the way he liked it.

Spencer had memorized most of their drink orders at this point, which was a blessing and a curse, but was usually quite handy when they trudged in after two hours of sleep with a long school day ahead of them. None of Spencer’s friends were known for their coherency in the morning.

Maybe they should stop hanging around Spencer and Brenda’s work all the time, maybe move on somewhere else. The atmosphere in there was brutal anyways. Bright blue walls and happy depictions of smiling, semi-humanoid fruit that were borderline demonic already? It was cute.

Not somewhere you would necessarily want to be seen every day, but cute all the same, and full of happy, colourful people in the summer. It wasn’t even sophisticated and pretentious like a coffee shop would be; it just smelled sticky sweet all the time and nobody complained because nobody has any other ideas.

Staying here though? Brenda didn’t accomplish much when her friends were around, she just kind of sat there and gossiped and enjoyed herself while Spencer kept everything running. It was kind of a metaphor of their entire life if you thought hard enough about it, you’d just have to throw Dallon in as the middle-man.

Brenda nodded though, and set down the paper, sipping her latte thoughtfully. Victor briefly noted the guy on the other side of the room who was obviously not from around here taking a good long look at Brenda’s ridiculous outfit. At least it wasn’t pirate day, her rainbow leggings and bright red shoes were somewhat reserved. Well, for Brenda at least.

She was dressed down with her hair in a ponytail, and she was paying him no mind. Spencer wiped her hands on her stained apron before coming back over to Victor and tapping the bottom of his paper, though she couldn’t help but give the guy across the room the evil eye, merely for looking in this direction. Victor snapped to get her attention again once it was lost, and Spencer added her input on it. “More detail though. If he was in fact a flaming homosexual, who would he be attracted to?”

“Oooo.” Brenda's interest was piqued. She set down her coffee and hopped off the counter to sit in the stool next to Victor’s. “Or, or. He could be bi.”

“Or Pan,” Spencer put in, trying in vain to fix her mess of a ponytail. Brenda started trying to help her, and she continued as the endeavour was undertaken. “Start with immediate people. Our friends.”

“Gay is easy,” Brenda said. She’d finally gotten Spencer’s dark mane under control, gave her a little kiss to the forehead then started spinning in her stool. “There’s you. Nate. Joe. Dallon? We can go with guys who are taken right?”

“I think he’d leave Dallon to you two,” Victor said simply, procuring a pen from his stupid silly man-satchel he insisted on bringing everywhere, much to Gabi’s eternal delight. They never needed to make fun of him. He embarrassed himself. “Nate and Joe.”

They looked to Brenda for clarification, so she stopped spinning and sipped her latte thoughtfully, quite pleased with the attention. If someone knew the current relationship status of anyone in this god-forsaken town, it was going to be Brenda. And she didn’t disappoint. “Joe and Andi are back on.”

Well yeah, they were nice people, they had their squabbles, nobody had really seen much of them because Andi was in school across the country and Joe was doing… Well he was doing Joe things with Petra and Patrick, usually.

“So, Nate.” Spencer looked up at the door when the bell rang, waving at all four-hundred vertical, mop haired feet of Dallon Weekes when he walked in. “Okay, if he’s bi?”

“Who’s bi.” Dallon sat down beside Brenda, who gave him a big, over-affectionate kiss before going back behind the counter to help Spencer clean up. It was almost time to leave anyways, the dark that was accumulating outside was nothing more than a grim reminder that summer was almost over and it would be cold soon. There was never anyone in here past seven nowadays outside of the exhausted-looking people on their way back from the gym, looking like they regretted every single thing they’d ever done.

“Alex,” Victor mumbled, jotting names down on the paper. Dallon nodded his approval. “Are we going with people who are taken?”

“No. Put down uh. What’s her name. Ivy-league dream girl.” Everyone assumed Brenda meant the girl Gabi met a few weeks ago, the one they’d probably never hear the end of. She seemed nice enough, quiet and conserved at first before getting dragged along by Gabi. They couldn’t even get her away from Gabi long enough to make their own opinions though. They’d heard poems-bordering-songs about her, she must be pretty great. “Willow, Riley, Ryan. Even if nobody likes Ryan. You forgot Patrick.”

“Put Patrick down and Petra will have you dead within the hour,” Spencer said drily, which sent Brenda into a giggle fit. It was no laughing matter, though. It was very serious. Anyone intent on taking Patrick away from his best friend obviously had a death wish. Victor hastily crossed out _**~~Patrick~~**_ and put down **_Petra_** instead. “Now could you guys leave, I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to.”

One of Spencer’s many talents was getting everyone out in record time, an art she’d perfected the pathetic amount of years she’d been working here. She ushered them and the remaining gym-goers out and locked up quickly, grabbing the back of Brenda’s shirt when she started going in Victor’s direction.

“We’re going home, missy.” Brenda gave a resigned sigh and let Spencer take her hand, linking her other arm through Dallon’s. It was a nice night, she kind of wished everyone was a bit livelier so they could go and do things, fun things, take Gabi’s car into the city and tear up the town. But no way was that happening. Spencer had been up all night swearing at the paper she’d been writing. And Dallon had been up trying to write and ultimately giving up.

They spent the entire walk home talking about Ryan and the scruffy boy from the coffee shop, his name is Jon, Dallon said, and he was a very nice guy. He played the guitar well, just not as well as Dallon did. Brenda picked a daisy that was growing in the cracks in the pavement and tucked it in Spencer’s hair. It didn’t even fall out until they got home.

 

 

 

Gabrielle Saporta and Alex Suarez shared an apartment. It wasn’t even _that_ shitty, even with Gabi’s stupid dead end job and reluctance to clean anything outside her room, they managed to retain some sort of order and cleanliness. They each had a room. They had a nice couch that smelled only faintly of cat pee and vomit, covered in obnoxious cat hair from Alex’s obnoxious cat.

The carpet was ugly but the drapes were nice, even if they didn’t match and even if they were slightly clawed at the bottom. Everything in the kitchen more or less worked, and the shower only ran really cold on Tuesdays for no real reason, maybe they just had a sadistic maintenance man? They’d learned to cope.  

Everyone else seemed to like the place well enough, because if they weren’t at the stupid Smoothie shop or making fun of Ryan and the scruffy guy at Starbucks or loitering around the University after handing something in or having a class, they were here.

It wasn’t a penthouse, but they didn’t mind it at all.

The rules of the apartment were posted on the side of the ugly floral lamp in the living room, put there at some point during a drunk party probably, written in Sharpie in Victor’s drunken scrawl and signed by Gabi. Not really signed. She drew a small stick person of authentication on the bottom corner of the yellow paper. That counted as a signature.

The rules were as follows.

  1. _No outside forces (boyfriends/girlfriends/pets/????) that have not been approved in the social circle. Gabi’s rule. No badge no admittance._ (Brenda had actually taken the time to make them all buttons and they were the lamest fucking things ever and everyone adored them.) 
  2. _Clothes on until at least 7 p.m. unless you’re in **GABI’S** bedroom._
  3. _No drinking until after 4 pm. unless you had a paper due, or an exam. We’re not heartless._
  4. _If you’re here just to make out with your fucking girlfriend, don’t be. (This means you, Nate.)_
  5. _Dallon’s not allowed to wear that tie in here. You know the one. He knows the one. It’s not allowed._



And when Gabi stumbled in after a long day at work, she found that Alex was in direct violation of at least two of the rules, but she didn’t care at all about that.

Because for one, those rules were only really for guests. And her. But mostly just for guests, right? And secondly? It meant she could be in direct violation of two rules as well. At least his hand wasn’t down his boxers. Some rules were meant to be followed for a reason.

Gabi woke Alex up when she dropped her soaking wet handbag to the floor and he nearly fell off the couch. He managed to save himself, somehow, grabbing the back of the couch and hauling himself back into a premium sitting position.

“It’s raining,” Gabi informed Alex. It was indeed, he could see it through the window, when he looked. Though, it was more torrential downpour than it was rain at this point, like the heavens had opened up and decided to bless the Earth with godly tears in a beautiful display of northern downpour.

And Gabi was caught in the middle of it.

Her hair was ruined. She'd spent a lot of fucking time on it this morning, a lot of fucking time that had come out of her day that she was never going to get back. Her makeup was running, she’d spent a lot of time on that too, and it had been perfect. Her clothes were already tight enough, they started sticking to her. Especially the skirt. And if it _wasn’t_ tight enough, it had started riding up her leg. She got catcalled three times on the way home by idiotic white boys standing out of the rain, smoking on their front porches.

And her favourite shoes were wet now too, so she couldn’t wear them tomorrow.

To top it all off, Willow started talking about her ex-boyfriend today, and Gabi had had to stand there and laugh about all the stupid stories Willow presented her with.

At least she could pull her clothes off in peace without Alex bitching about it. He was in just his boxers himself, and watching sports with the intensity that only came with being at least somewhat drunk.

“You gonna say hi?” Gabi began the battle to get her shoes off at once, having to sit down and wrangle them off with more effort than anyone should ever have to exert over something this stupid. She sat down to get the other one off, then started ridding herself of her shirt, leaving her in noting but her bright purple bra she knew Alex wouldn’t even care she was wearing. “Because let me tell you, I’ve had the shittiest day.”

“I’ll battle you over that,” Alex grumbled, flipping off the hockey player on the TV who was arguing with the ref. He had no reason to argue, not really. He probably had a shit ton of money and he wasn’t struggling his way through school and living off instant ramen and he also probably had a great girlfriend waiting at home, probably for sex.

This hockey player was going to have a lot of sex when he got home, probably, and it was going to be great. He didn’t have to worry about her wandering off with another girl. He knew she loved him (or his money) and she knew he probably did love her. Or at least he loved her boobs because they were probably really great-

“Willow wouldn’t shut up about her ex-boyfriend,” Gabi said, flopping down beside her friend and gracefully snatching the room-temperature beer from his hand. Gross. She folded her long legs up on the couch and tried to find a way to be comfortable, as well as a way to be as engrossed with a hockey argument as Alex seemed to be at the moment. Though, all the hockey players were gross ugly sweaty guys, and Gabi didn’t have an interest in those at all. “A guy grabbed my ass today as well, but Willow smacked him with her handbag.” She paused thoughtfully and drank down the rest of the beer, placing the empty bottle delicately in his lap. “And my hair is wet, Suarez. My hair is wet.”

“Nate has a new girlfriend,” Alex said, like that was supposed to be relevant to Gabi somehow, or explain how that made this the shittiest day of anything ever. Like somehow something good happening in Nate Novarro’s life was somehow more terrible than having your ass grabbed by a gross guy in the street while the girl you liked looked on, because Gabi didn’t see that.

Gabi didn’t know. Alex didn’t want Gabi to know, even if he loved her to death and they told each other nearly everything. It was dangerous though, to disclose this particular information, an explanation of what made this the shittiest day ever. Too dangerous. No way was Alex willing to risk everything because someone couldn’t keep their mouth shut. Though Gabi was usually known for being able to keep secrets until the day she died, bringing it up now especially seemed like a terrible idea.  

Truth be told, Alex had been in love with Nate Novarro for way too long now. Probably since high school. And Nate hadn’t had a girl who’d been able to make him laugh in all this time. This girl in particular was scary.

Nothing too too special looks wise, she was not a runway model-type girl like Gabi- or even just conventionally pretty like Willow, but she still had at least a sliver of a chance with Nate. Alex didn’t, and he wouldn't. Nate had had girlfriends in the past, they came and went, but he’d never been so into any one of them.

Alex told all of that to Gabi, except the last part about his undying unconditional love for Nate, and she made a very sour face, like the idea is about as appealing as thinking about her parents having sex.

“It’s that Riley girl, isn’t it. She’s plain.” Gabi rolled her eyes and made an attempt at flattening her hair. She’d have to do something with it later, shit. “Nice enough. Kinda funny.”

“She’s pretty though,” Alex conceded, and that was it, that was the end of it. He’d admitted it. He couldn’t take it back. “Not pretty like you but pretty still,” he added quickly, which satisfied Gabi who hadn’t been all that affronted for starters.

Gabi wasn’t vain. Well, not as much as she could be with the way she looked. She and Alex just had this odd sort of relationship. Like Alex thought Gabi was quite possibly the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen and that kept her confidence going when she was having a rough time. On the flip side, Gabi wasn’t really sure how Nate could even stay straight like, had he seen Alex lately? It was the sort of impossible friendship that formed between perfect people with low self-esteem.

They’d been this way ever since Gabi showed up at Alex’s house when they were in high school looking both Scene and Boy. She was scowling, scary, swathed in an enormous purple hoodie that hid any premise of a chest, and the streaks in her hair were yellow and pink and he remembered being terrified at that moment because he spent most of his time just with Nate because people like Gabi scared him. Scary and Scene was the worst possible combination, and here she was rudely demanding that Alex teach her how to dance.

This ability was something Alex had kept on the down-low back then. Heaven forbid anyone think he was gay, right? So he taught her, and she stopped being so awkward and rude and scene and started being really nice to him, and they’d been inseparable. She wanted a guy friends who wouldn’t hit on her all the time, and she’d found one, and their friendship was beautiful.

And then the girl Gabi was trying to impress with her dancing decided the whole school should know about the girl hitting on her and yeah, the dyke and gaylord did really well together in that school.

High school was no cakewalk for anyone between Brenda’s choice in red-framed lesbian glasses and circus-freak fashion (that she still wore to this day, despite Spencer’s pleading) and Nate being too cool to hang out with them all in public but being lonely and kind of whiny and needy in their presence and it was around that time when Spencer and Ryan were pretty emo and dating and that was a train wreck all on its own and Willow wasn’t even around back then-

Gabi didn’t feel like dwelling on that. No thanks. Thinking about it usually just made her want to throw up. And also burn Brenda’s entire wardrobe. She ruffled up Alex’s already messy hair and smiled instead. “We could go fuck around at the Studio and make all the white girls jealous.” It was a favourite pastime of theirs. Because Gabi was the best student Alex had ever had and the way he himself moved should be illegal, honestly.

But right now he was kind of too drunk and too upset to care.

“Tomorrow,” Alex promised, and proceeded to consume entirely too much alcohol when Gabi clothed herself and left again later to catch up with Brenda. She brought an umbrella this time and told him to keep his chin up just before she ducked out.

Alex laughed at that.   

 

 

 

The next day, the _Suarez Theory_ was presented to Willow Beckett for further examination and feedback.

“You theorize about people being homosexuals,” Willow said, raising an eyebrow over the paper at Victor, who just shrugged. She shook her head, setting it down. “You need to get a job.”

“I’ve offered,” Spencer said, angrily, swiping her cloth across the counter where Victor’s spilled smoothie just by being careless. He offered nothing but a slightly-apologetic smile, and she smacked him with her towel. She threatened to do it again when he pleaded customer abuse “He’s hopeless, as you can see. I stopped trying.”

“I said I’d get a job when I got a girlfriend,” Victor said simply, looking back angrily when there was snickering in the corner and fuck, if Nate was here to be with his girlfriend he should just do that and keep out of their business.

Victor was pretty sure that was the only reason Willow was here, to maybe snap a picture of this new Riley girl and take it to show Gabi at work. Or maybe take it to show Alex. Riley was, admittedly, very pretty. She laughed really loudly, they hadn’t seen her unsmiling as of yet, and she did make Nate laugh. Nate had neglected to introduce her to the group, however, so they’d have to dock points for that.

Willow was dressed up too, for no apparent reason. She had her yellow sunflower dress and her glasses on- yeah no, of course she was going to see Gabi. Victor had to wonder if she’d look so much like a flower child in the winter when she couldn’t wear the seemingly endless supply of summer dresses she had at her disposal. Knowing Willow, she’d find a way.

Willow hopped down off her stool and adjusted her skirt. “We’re going to see Gabi and Alex later, are you coming?” She asked Spencer, and she must be fully aware that Nate could hear her, or maybe she was doing this out of spite or some ulterior motive because he looked over, kind of expectantly. He could show up uninvited, but Riley couldn’t. Willow disregarded both of them. This was a cold move. She did look over pointedly for extra points because Nate knew full well what day it was, he shouldn’t have done anything today if he knew what day it was.

“Yeah. We’ll see you later then,” Spencer said with a smile as Willow dragged Victor out by the arm. She relaxed visibly outside, and Victor clapped her on the shoulder, because she did good today. Willow had actually been trying reaaally hard to make friends around here, she was worried for some reason that nobody was actually going to like her, even if they already did. Half the group was already smitten in one way or another. Victor usually helped her out as best as he could, but it was usually taken the wrong way.

Spencer got back to work when they left, and then she had to go wake up Brenda because she’d fallen asleep in the closet on the mops with a book in her lap.

It happened sometimes. She was lucky the manager never noticed.

The manager didn’t notice much. Spencer shut the door behind her. It wasn’t too busy anyways, right?  

 

 

 

“Have you ever had sex in a closet?” Brenda found the need to ask Willow on their way to the Studio. Spencer found that to be the right time to look affronted, go bright red and smack Brenda on the arm. Dallon merely raised an eyebrow, watching Spencer attempt to fix her mysteriously messy hair self-consciously. He drew his own conclusions when Brenda started laughing. “It’s fun.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever had sex in a closet.” Willow paused to think about it for a moment, nodding her head slowly under careful consideration. “Though I think it would sound like fun.”

“Ask Gabi,” Victor suggested. They’d be seeing her soon anyways. On Wednesdays they all went to watch Gabi and Alex dancing because sometimes Alex’s students needed to be put in their place because they thought they were already the hottest things on two legs and started bragging about it.

No.

Watching the two of them never got old anyways, since they did something new almost every week. Waltzing if it had been a long day and they didn’t want to think so much of what they were doing, Cha Cha or a Salsa or Merengue depending on the day and whether or not Gabi felt like wearing a really short skirt. Which was often. Usually a lot of people turned up to watch, mostly just so they could gawk at the physical beauty that was Alex Suarez in tight pants and alternatively Gabi Saporta in whatever showed her legs off the best. Without getting slapped by either of them. It was magic, truly.  

Hopefully a lot of people were there now, in the absence of Nate who had just said to wish Alex luck. Yeah no that was not going to fly, and Nate probably knew that. Alex would be mad. But that was okay, it was none of their concern. Nate knew what he was doing apparently, and if he was okay with skipping out on supporting his friends in their endeavours, it was his own fault for being that way.

Gabi would be out for his blood later, in the place of Alex who would probably pretend he didn’t care as much as he did.

Brenda had this bad habit of squealing and jumping around as soon as they got into the actual ballroom, where all the self-absorbed white kids they knew who were trying to look posh were practicing the waltz.

They were all in time, doing what they were supposed to. But they looked boring. They looked too concentrated and stiff, focusing on the actions more than they were feeling them.

Willow was mesmerized though, this was the first time she’d actually been in here. It was initiation. She was finally in with the crowd. And, honestly, this was really not a bad place to be spending Friday night. Better than getting annoyed with her roommates too early and going to sleep at eight because she has nothing else she’d like to be doing. She was finally in with them.

This was amazing.

Our heroes waited patiently for the music to wind down, Brenda pulling Dallon into a sort of silly waltz all their own while complaining about Spencer’s two left feet. Coming down to it, Brenda and Dallon weren’t too bad at dancing themselves, and they could be fantastic if they had the time to practice. Spencer, for someone with her sense of rhythm, was awfully bad at keeping up a tempo. Victor liked to pretend he was a lot worse than he was so nobody would think he was ‘girly’, so he stood still and pretended he didn’t want to be out there dancing right now.

Willow just stuck right to Victor’s side and waited. She wasn’t sure what she was waiting for, but she figured she’d find out when everyone more or less cleared off the dance floor, shuffling off to the sides when the music dimmed and went quiet.

Today, two people stayed on, looking cocky and confident, and this was good. This added conflict- some blonde bimbo and her twenty dollar cardboard cut-out of a boyfriend had decided they needed to learn their place, apparently. They were not noteworthy, but people knew them. Probably bullies in high school, the kind of people who wouldn’t leave Alex or Gabi alone, which would only drive them to be better and crush them into the polished wood floors. They were good. Somewhat. They were about to get shown up.  

“Oh look who’s here,” Gabi said, and Willow was not too sure where she came in from but she was here and she was suddenly very close, her chin hooked over Willow’s shoulder. “Good to see you.”

“There you are, jeez, people are waiting.” Brenda shoved Alex from where he was cowering behind them, over to next to Gabi, who grabbed his arm and pulled him to the dance floor.

“Do you see Nate,” Alex whispered as they walked, shoes clacking loudly against the floor in the sudden silence, but Gabi just poked him the side to get him to focus again, putting his hands where they belonged and holding their arms up.

“I’m here and you need to pay attention to me now, okay?” She will not put up with him spacing out today the way he usually doesn’t put up with her spacing out most days.

And he does focus after that. As much as he could without glasses on. It was hard not to, Gabi was taller without any shoes on at all, and now that she was in heels, the height difference was quite noticeable.

Manageable, though. Somehow they balanced each other out. Gabi was modestly grand tonight. Her dress was white and long and flowing, and it suited her well, something from last year’s competition if she remembered correctly. Willow, among other people, was quite transfixed, especially when the music started, and everyone else kind of started thinking that it was a shame they weren’t doing something Latin. Alex and Gabi were one-hundred percent flawless all the same.

Those who could consider themselves ‘seasoned’ here, could sit and point out every minor flaw in the other couple’s form and posture. The only seasoned ones in the crowd were Brenda, Dallon and a few of Alex’s other dancers who they didn’t hang out with. And they _did_ notice every time the other couple fumbled and someone caught someone’s foot, but Alex and Gabi were in the zone. They were focused on nobody but each other, and there was nothing that’s going to break that concentration.

Gabi’s feet barely touched the ground when she moved in rhythmic steps, guided mostly by Alex who was spinning them flawlessly, pausing and evening out so he could give Gabi a spin, mostly just so she could show off the other girl and partially because she loved the way these skirts moved when they were dancing. Their movements were fluid as water over stones in a brook, constant and stable. The word swan came to mind, watching the white hem of Gabi’s dress sweep around her legs and across the floor, even if swans weren't that graceful and were just vicious waterfowl. Alex and Gabi both had such dazzling smiles that it would be hard to look away anyways.

Sometimes they had sufficient competition o these days, but the girl and her boyfriend had stopped and were watching too, because damn they still needed to learn them a thing or two and everyone started clapping madly when they came to a stop, and Alex let go immediately and walked right off the floor, leaving Gabi to saunter back over to where the rest of their friends were waiting.  

 “Holy shit,” Willow muttered, accepting Gabi’s hug without a second thought even though Gabi was hot and sweaty and usually Willow was unaccepting of hugs to protect her virtue but damn. Gabi had earned it this time.   

“I know, I know, I am pretty great.” Gabi held Willow out in front of her, grinning like an idiot. “I’m glad you showed up though.”

“Especially when Nate didn’t,” Brenda put in, and the smile slipped off Gabi’s face- just for a moment, but it was noticeable. She clapped Willow on the shoulder and brushed past them all to locate her Alex before he got into any sort of trouble. Brenda followed closely behind because drama would most certainly follow them, leading everyone else to follow. They lived for the drama. 

They were equal parts disappointed and relieved to see a very sweaty Alex packing up to leave. Brenda promptly scared the ever living shit out of him with a hug. “You did greaaat!”

“Thanks?” Alex patted her head awkwardly and looked over at Gabi, who shrugged, but he was suspecting this would turn into some sort of group therapy that would inevitably lead to Victor having proof that his theory may or may not be true and Alex wasn’t down with that. “I’m tired though now. I’ll have to catch up with you all later, alright?”

And Alex Suarez made his exit, fast as you like. They watched him go, and nobody really commented about Nate Novarro after that.


End file.
